COLUMBIA, SC.- The Columbia Museum of Art hosts Melissa Chiu on Sunday, January 25 at 3:00 p.m. for a lecture and signing of her new book Chinese Contemporary Art: 7 Things You Should Know, available for purchase in the Museum Shop. Free with admission or membership.

“Melissa’s lecture on Chinese contemporary art will provide our Museum members and visitors a unique opportunity to gain insight from her extensive research and connect with issues in China today,” Karen Brosius, executive director said.

Chiu is the Vice President of Global Art Programs and Museum Director of Asia Society, a leading authority on Asian contemporary art and is uniquely positioned to talk about the dramatic beginnings of the vanguard movement in China in 1979 to the burgeoning scene of today. Chiu's new book offers an accessible guide to understanding Chinese contemporary art: what you need to know about the artists, the art market, and what can legitimately be called a new art movement, perhaps the first great art movement of the 21st century.

She is a visiting professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York and a lecturer at numerous American universities including Harvard University. She is a 2003-2004 Getty Research Fellow and served on grant and policy advisory committees for the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Chiu is a board member for Association of Art Museum Directors; Academic Advisory Board, Asia Art Archives, Hong Kong; Advisory Board, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vancouver; advisor for Art 21, art television series broadcast on PBS; board member, Vietnam Foundation for the Arts; and was a founding board member of Asian Contemporary Art Consortium in New York, a group serving the interests of Asian art and culture at the worlds leading museums.

Chiu earned an M.A. in arts administration in 1994 and a Ph.D in 2005 in art history in her native country of Australia, and has produced nearly 30 exhibitions of international art. She served as an editor for Asian contemporary art, The Grove Dictionary of Art and consulting editor for Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, published by Oxford University Press, London and New York, and is the author and editor of books, monographs, and anthologies, among them books on the Chinese contemporary artist Zhang Huan and co-editor for a book on the art of the Cultural Revolution published by Yale University Press in 2008. Her most recent books include Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China, which focuses on the international Chinese artistic diaspora and Chinese Contemporary Art: 7 Things You Should Know.